Burrett’s opinion
Benjamin Burrett’s advice is targeted toward white papers, but truly applies to any content.
“Writing that presents a strong opinion is always more interesting to read – even if it’s an opinion that the reader doesn’t share.”
Burrett is trying to guard against white papers that are sleep-inducing. Feature lists don’t even excite the engineers, and definitely don’t excite your prospects. As part of the “don’t sleep” attempt, Burrett suggests that the product marketer ask some probing questions.
“Push your colleagues to go beyond simply what the product does, to understand the philosophy behind it, the true benefit for the user, and how this connects to larger, topical themes.”
Questions are good.
In Bredemarket’s seven-question exploration system, this not only relates to the obvious questions of “why” and “benefits,” but even to related questions such as “emotion.”
Densmer’s spine
And Benjamin Burrett isn’t the only person saying this. Look at what Lee Densmer just shared.
“[A company] built a ‘thought leadership’ campaign they were so sure would break through. It involved internal experts, the writing was high quality and covered all the ‘hot topics’ in their space.
“But the results were embarrassing. Traffic and engagement was flat. Everything was technically ‘on message’, but it was also vague, safe, and unmemorable.
“The messaging they’d written didn’t stand for anything. There was no strong point of view. There was no spine.”
So how do you inject a spine into content?
Bredehoft’s money
After my draft 0.5 of this post, I rewrote it to inject emotions that may resonate with the reader…or may not.
- If I go pure 100% sage and dispassionately discuss the adverse consequences of emotionless content creation, you’ll turn me off in a nanosecond. And rightly so.
- If I tell you to inject emotion into your content, then you will energize your readers and make some money.
And money is good.
So let’s help Bredemarket make some money. If I can help you with your identity/biometric or technology content, proposal, or analysis needs, set up a free call with me and we’ll discuss.
Bredemarket 